gems, jade, nephite, jadeite, fei cui, pyroxene jade, amphibole jade, axe heads, stone axe heads, thunderstones

From the Egyptians, who supposed that stones fallen from the sky, the ba en pe, were fragments of the stone vault of heaven, detached by thunderbolts, down to our own day, through the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, and the entire Middle Ages, the belief was general that the tools of the Stone Age, discovered in the ground, originated from lightning. The bibliography of the subject alone would be lengthy if it were necessary to point out the passages in Damigeron, Pliny, Seneca, Claudian, Saint Isidore, Marbode, and all the Lapidaries, in a word; in reality, the thesis is a single one, the authors having done nothing more than copy one another. M. Salomon Reinach has published its essence; after him there is not much left to glean; we can therefore do no better than refer the reader to his substantial note. But if Western literature has enabled us to know the legends associated with these stones, as well as the qualities attributed to them, it seems to have been overlooked that analogous beliefs were widespread in the Far East and that the Stone Age, which had its era in China and Japan, just as in Europe, left the same vestiges, surrounded, at both ends of the world, by the same feelings of respect, and to which supernatural virtues were likewise attributed.